


you know better (than to talk to it like that)

by Kangoo



Series: Front toward enemy [28]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: (kinda), Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Ghosts and where to find them, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Nightmares (the destiny kind), Shadowkeep spoilers, pseudo-poetic bullshit written at 4 am after playing shadowkeep all day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 09:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Razel knows what it's like to be haunted.





	you know better (than to talk to it like that)

**Author's Note:**

> this is all bungie fault they keep mentioning cayde being dead ):
> 
> eris and ikora love each other so much and i'm into that. this can be read as either gen or romantic tho
> 
> title from hozier's it will come back

Razel doesn’t hear the nightmares surrounding Eris. He’s not supposedto. They’re punishment and obstacle, regrets used as fuel by the Hive. Summoned, not caught. Not like the lost souls of Guardians all over the Moon, crying out for help, trapped by magic and Darkness.

But he doesn’t need to hear them speak to know the kind of things they’re telling her.

(Razel knows what it’s like to be haunted.)

Razel knows what it’s like to be haunted and loved, to be haunted and to love, to be haunted _by _love. Sometimes he still reaches out in the moments between sleep and awakening, expecting to find someone reaching back. Terrified to find someone reaching back.

(It’s an odd thing, that, the fear, when it comes to the things you regret. But wouldn’t you be afraid, if you found what you have lost so long ago? Sweet and soothing to the bitterness of longing? They never come back quite the same, the things you lost. They never come back _right._)

But Eris doesn’t reach out. She’s smarter than him in that way — in many ways, in _every _ways. But he knows she wants to. Her fingers twitch and the Nightmares twitch in return, black and red and looming in the corner of your eye. A flicker of life, scarier than any haunting.

She’s too in control to be distracted, too used to the whispers. She knows better than to listen. But she can’t stop herself from hearing it. Even if she waves it off, because Hunters are like that — unflappable — it has to weigh down on her, their constant presence behind her (_half a step behind, almost shoulder to shoulder, close enough to reach out and tangle their fingers together if he wanted to, Light, does he want to_).

So he tries to distract her, instead.

If there’s anything Razel knows how to be, it’s loud. He can talk for a long time, about anything, to anyone. Not that Eris is listening to a word he’s saying — she’s used to not listening to annoying little voices pestering her. But he’s louder than the whispers.

He knows that, because he’s been on his own before. Alone with his thoughts, in the emptiness of Nessus or Mars or the Shattered Coast, where everything is quiet and lonely just the way he used to like it. Where’s there’s fighting and nothing else, so much fighting you forget the _nothing_ until there’s nothing left to fight anymore but yourself.

(Razel knows what it’s like, to have to choose between listening and surviving, every single hour you’re alive.)

It’s hard when there’s another voice you’d much rather have fill the silence, harder still when it’s all too happy to do so, familiar in that discordant way dead things tend to be. Easier to be loud for someone else. Especially when they kinda want you to be.

He’s helping. Or at least not making things worse. That’s all he ever asks for.

She doesn’t listen, but she _hears_. And they must be real chatterboxes, these Nightmares of hers, because she whirls around and shout,

“Quiet!”

(And oh boy is Razel glad he hasn’t elicited that kind of reaction from her yet. Must be doing something with _his_ chattering.)

“You’re all insufferable!” There’s something familiar in her tone, something that twist in his chest like a tangled fishing line (_You’re insufferable_, whispered in fondness, balanced on the edge of laughter). Something like familiarity in the way she says it, too, like words she’s had to use so many times they’ve formed their own path along her tongue, left their shape pressed in the roof of her mouth like a body on a memory foam mattress. “Keep your torment for someone who _gives a damn._”

Ikora frowns, in that way of hers that says she cares, she _worries_. Razel could draw that frown in his sleep.

“Eris. The Vanguard is at your disposal.” _I’m here for you_. It echoes, louder than her words.

Eris tilts her head, like she does when she can’t help but _hear_. But this time, Razel knows she listens.

“And, if you’ll excuse us, Ikora…” She gestures at Razel, with the smallest of nods, just so Ikora doesn’t mistake her hurry for flippancy. “We have work to do.”

_I’m glad_, she doesn’t add, doesn’t need to. _Thank you._

Hunters aren’t very good at voicing their feelings, but they do tend to surround themselves with people who know how to decipher the way they say _I love you_.

Ikora stops him on his way out. She doesn’t need to touch his arm to stop him, even though she does. A single look from her stops him in his track, a chain wrapped around his ankle, tripping him. The weight is welcome. He thinks he’d float away without it.

“Razel. Whatever she needs.”

For once, she’s worried for someone else — it’s a nice change.

He nod. Smiles, trying to be reassuring, and leaves with a friendly wave. He jogs after Eris. Wonders, in that absent-minded way of his, if she’s let him hug her. Light knows she needs it.

There’s a second set of footsteps ringing after his own, following close behind. The echo of a whisper that he tries not to listen to but hears anyway. A shadow, warm as a breath on the back of his neck. Ikora doesn’t see it. She’s not supposed to.

(Razel knows what it’s like to be haunted.)

He reaches behind him, and wraps their fingers together.


End file.
